


empty hands, empty hearts

by nadin



Category: Wonder Woman (2017), Wonder Woman - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, present day, ww84 alternate universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-31 01:10:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20106688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nadin/pseuds/nadin
Summary: WonderTrev love week 2019Day 1 - Present dayIt took Diana longer to find him the second time; to find the right way to bring Steve back. But when she did, she was determined to hold on to him and never let go.In 1984, Diana watches a ghost of Steve Trevor vanish before her eyes, struck by an awful realization that it has all been a ploy to give her hope and make her compliant.In 2019, Steve is brought back to life with no recollection of those events, save for the feeling that the afterworld may be more complicated than he's ever thought.





	empty hands, empty hearts

**Author's Note:**

> I was thinking about that speculation floating around social media a while back about how Steve could be a ghost in WW84. And while he is clearly not, it would indeed make an interesting and tragic story. So this happened :)

** _1984_ **

_It’s a lie._

_It’s always been a lie, and part of Diana refuses to accept it._

_Can’t._

_Won’t._

_She watches Steve dissipate before her eyes, his hand turning to smoke in hers. There is a small voice in the back of Diana’s heard telling her what, deep down, she’s known from the start. That it was too good to be true, too perfect to be real. She’s lived long enough to know that dead people don’t come back to life, no matter how much you want them to._

_Diana watches the ghost of Steve Trevor grow thin until she can see right through him. Until his voice is a memory she can barely summon in her mind. Until the colour of his eyes has blended with the sky and she can’t tell the difference anymore._

_Losing him for the second time doesn’t hurt any less, but the betrayal of it slices deeper than she has ever imagined it could, splintering her soul. She has loved him and she has mourned him and she has missed him for so long, and the thought of doing it all over again is unbearable._

_So much of her life has been a lie she no longer knows what the truth is or where to look for it. Her mother’s secrets still burn in Diana’s chest; hot anger flaring up when she least expects it. She hasn’t been made of clay, and killing the God of War didn’t eradicate war, and mankind was not meant to be fair and just._

_A silent scream claws its way out of her throat as Steve goes, and she pressed her hand to her lips to muffle it._

_He is not Steve, not her Steve. He never has been. And the reality of it is devastating._

\---

** _2019_ **

It took Diana longer to find him the second time; to find the right way to bring Steve back. But when she did, she was determined to hold on to him and never let go.

Standing before her, he looked confused and lost and more than a little surprised.

And real. So very real this time.

\---

The one thing that Steve remembered of the afterlife – the other side? The underworld? – was the cold. An all-consuming cold like nothing he had ever experienced before, seeping all the way into his bones and finding a home so deep inside of him he wouldn’t know how to scratch it out even if he tried.

Steve had read Dante’s _Inferno_ once, a very long time ago, the details of the story unclear and faded in his mind. But the one thing he remembered was the description of the lowest level of Hell where the traitors and betrayers were stuck frozen in a lake of ice, trapped in the cold for all of eternity. He also remembered thinking how odd that idea had seemed to him, then. To think of the place of damnation as eternal cold when the world often referred to it as ‘hellfire.’ And how fitting, too. Where else would people with the ice in their heart belong?

Two hours and a hundred years after he had climbed into a German airplane and blown himself up for the sake of mankind, Steve was standing under the hot spray of water in a shower in a house belonging to a guy named Bruce as he tried, and mostly failed, to wrap his mind around the fact that he was alive. Again. And he was thinking of that old poem that he didn’t even know he’d had stored somewhere in the back of his mind because, no matter how hot the water streaming down his body was, Steve didn’t seem to be able to get warm.

It had taken him a solid ten minutes to figure out how the shower worked – you’d think that the future would make things easier for people, not harder. He had been tempted to go look for Diana to have her help him, just this once. Diana, who Steve had last seen having a heated argument with said Bruce, and over the fact of Steve’s return, no less. Steve didn’t want to interrupt them though – in part because it was rude, and in part, because he wasn’t sure he wanted to know what it was that had made them both so upset.

So here he was, teeth chattering as if he was trapped in a block of ice.

Steve didn’t remember dying. Thinking back, his last memory was of the endless black sky stretching before his eyes and his finger trembling ever so slightly on the trigger. And then nothing. And then he was here, somehow, in the year 2019, and had it not been for the damned shower with its hundreds of settings and controls, he’d have a hard time believing that last piece of information. Well, _harder_.

And the cold… It made Steve wonder if it was just shock – he’d have to be shocked, after everything, wouldn’t he? – or if the truth ran deeper. If it was the memory that he couldn’t seem to grab hold of, but that continued to exist somewhere inside him, nonetheless.

Truth be told, he’d rarely thought of death, before. Not in the trenches with bullets whistling above his head, and not even in the cockpit of the plane, with the woman he’d loved fiercely and wholeheartedly left behind when he’d made that decision for both of them, one that Steve had hoped would mean something, in the end. It was not the other side that ever intrigued him. It was everything that he’d leave behind that he’d always been focused on.

It was never death that used to scare him. It was _not living_.

Steve felt a touch of cool air to his back, and, when he turned his head slightly to the side, he saw Diana step into the cubicle behind him, the steam curling around them in wisps. She closed the door, pausing briefly, and then she moved to him.

“You don’t mind, do you?” she murmured as her arms slipped around Steve, her voice muffled by the sound of running water and the blood rush in Steve’s ears that had all but rendered him deaf momentarily. 

That she was there with him? The question baffled Steve.

“No,” he said, his hand closing over one of her forearms.

As far as he was concerned, he would have been absolutely, perfectly, one thousand percent happy if she never left his side for as long as he walked this Earth.

Yet, not even the soothing comfort of Diana’s presence and the warmth of her touch managed to chase away the chill throbbing under his skin.

“You’re shaking,” Diana murmured quietly when he shivered, her arms tightening around him.

“I’m...” Steve let out a shuddering breath. He swallowed and ran his hand over his face. “I’m okay, it’s just...”

Just what? Just that he’d come back to life after being dead for a hundred years? Just that the woman he’d been madly in love with before he’d died still wanted to be with him? Just that the world was nothing like Steve remembered and he didn’t even know where to start understanding it now?

Just… _everything_.

He shook his head. 

“I love you,” Diana whispered into the curve of his neck.

Steve’s heart stuttered in his chest.

She’d said that once already, earlier, when she had wrapped her arms around him for the first time in this century, her eyes brimming with tears and his throat tight with emotion as he’d held her. Back then, Steve had thought that nothing could surpass the feeling that had blossomed inside of him in that moment, his whole being zeroed in on the two of them and the sound of Diana’s voice the only thing he could hear. But here they were, and she’d said it again, making his breath hitch and his pulse stutter, and the world a little unsteady around him. 

They stayed like that for a long while, Diana’s body pressed against his, her lips moving over skin every now and then. Until the tension started to seep out of his body and his breathing began to even out, his heartbeat falling into the same pattern as hers that was thumping against his shoulder-blades. Until the water turned lukewarm and Diana drew back at last.

They dried off and got dressed as if they’d done that a hundred times before. As if they’d spent a century doing just that, every day. As if they’d picked up where they’d left off, without missing a beat. The feeling was surreal, somewhat, but Steve couldn’t say he didn’t like it.

“If you’re hungry--” Diana began as she squeezed out her hair.

He shook his head. “No.”

She left her towel on the peg and stepped towards him, lifting her hand to touch Steve’s cheek.

“You should rest then, get some sleep.”

Steve opened his mouth to protest. He didn’t want to sleep. He had questions, so many questions that his head felt like it might explode. What he wanted was to ask them all and demand answers until he’d stopped feeling like something had hurled him out of that plane a hundred years ago and he’d been plummeting towards the ground with nothing to cushion his fall ever since.

Except there was no way he could put them into words, not yet, because—yeah, he wanted to sleep.

He felt his body deflate, suddenly too exhausted to care about anything beyond the next several hours he hoped to spend in bed.

“Will you stay with me?” he asked, hopeful and suddenly worried about any protocol and rules that he wasn’t yet aware of.

Sure, they had slept together before – only last night, as far as Steve was concerned – and they had just taken a shower together, which he considered a rather intimate affair in and of itself. But this was a different time, a different world that he knew nothing about, save for the fact that he was as in love with Diana as he had been a century ago. And the idea of being left alone for however short a time was overwhelming, no matter how tired he was.

Diana’s features softened. “Of course,” she said without hesitation, as if it hadn’t even crossed her mind to do otherwise.

The clothes that Diana had fetched for him felt odd on his body — the high-quality cotton too soft against his skin — but the thought of putting the German uniform back on made Steve sick to his stomach. He’d left it on the bathroom floor instead, hoping against all hope he’d never have to wear it ever again.

He climbed into the bed and felt Diana slip under the covers behind him, the sheets crisp and clean and soft to the touch. He rolled over, reaching for her immediately, and for a long time, they simply lay there, facing one another, their legs tangled together and their faces nearly touching.

“I’ve dreamed of you,” Diana murmured, her finger moving idly over his face, down his cheek, along his chin, over the prickly stubble trickling down his neck.

Steve sighed and turned his head to kiss the palm of her hand. “Good dreams?” he asked, smiling a little.

“Yes, always.”

It wasn’t true, though. Couldn’t be, but he didn’t have it in him to ask her about the bad ones.

He took in a breath and exhaled slowly, a tremor running down his body.

Diana brushed her fingers through his hair, still damp after the shower. “What is it?” 

“Can’t seem to get warm,” he murmured.

She shifted close, gathering him to her. Her lips brushed to Steve’s cheek, his temple, over his forehead. He buried his face in the hollow of her neck and let out a weary breath, feeling himself relax. She felt the same, smelled the same, and while he didn’t know how any of this was possible, he decided to stop thinking about it, for now, and just be.

“I missed you,” she whispered into his skin.

“Diana…”

He drifted off with her hands moving over his back and the murmur of her voice in the dark, and for the first time since he’d set foot in Europe at the start of the war, he didn’t dream of anything at all.

\---

Being in love with Diana was easy. Each time she looked at him, she would smile. And each time she smiled, Steve would forget the horrors he had lived through and forgive himself for the things he had once vowed to never leave behind. To be with Diana, to be loved by her, he knew he would forgive himself anything, even the darkest parts of himself that would have undoubtedly dragged him to the deepest pit of despair if Steve allowed them to.

She was different now, but she was also not, and the clash between the woman he’d met all that time ago and the one that he got to wake up to even morning now never ceased to intrigue him.

Diana told him about what had happened 35 years ago, in 1984. A couple of months after his return, she laid out the full story, about a ghost who had given her hope only to take it away and leave a gaping hole behind. A trick played on her that had left more scars behind.

“I’m sorry,” Steve said when she fell silent. They were in Paris then, walking back to her – _their_, Steve had to remind himself, still adjusting to the concept - apartment after dinner one night, the streets quiet and empty, with only an occasional passer-by crossing their path. “I don’t remember.”

“I know.” Diana shook her head and let out a breath, not looking at him. “You have nothing to be sorry for, Steve. It was not you, nor was it your doing. It was--”

She rubbed her forehead but didn’t finish.

Her words filled Steve with anguish and sadness, and, above all – anger at whoever had taken something dear to her to use it to their advantage, to hurt her for wanting a second chance at something that had been taken away from them. One that the two of them had probably never had in the first place, if he was being honest with himself. The war had never been kind, and whatever blessings it had brought upon them – the people they’d met, the days that had made them feel more alive than ever because of all the death around them – had been short-lived.

“And the worst thing,” Diana added quietly, “was that having you like that was better than not having you at all.” She lifted her eyes to his then, her gaze apologetic. “What does that say about me?”

Steve stopped then, tugging her towards him until there was no space left between them and she had no other choice but to look at him. He lifted his other hand and brushed his thumb along her cheekbone, his eyes searching her face.

“It says that you are loving. And kind. And that you want to see the good in people and the world even after everything you’d been through. It takes strength, Diana, and compassion, and courage to keep doing that.”

“Steve…”

She was shaking her head, but Steve had merely moved closer and wrapped his arms around her, holding her like he wanted to hold her for as long as he lived. 

His voice was decisive and full of conviction, and Steve still believed every word that he’d said. But then there it was again, the familiar cold feeling in the pit of his stomach, reminding him of his first night in this time.

And he wondered, absently and not for the first time, if not remembering something meant that it had never happened. 

**Author's Note:**

> While I never considered the idea of Steve being a ghost plausible for the established movie universe, the idea was something that I've always found intriguing, what with my love for angst and all things sad. In addition to that, I'm incredibly curious to have a glimpse to Steve's perspective on what the "other side" might be like. 
> 
> That being said, I am absolutely here for the happy reunion that I hope with all my heart we will get in WW84 :)
> 
> Thank you for reading! Feedback and general thoughts on this idea are very welcome, I'd love to discuss it if you guys have anything you want to share!


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